Google is to shut down Stadia, its cloud based gaming service, on the 18th January 2023.

Launched 3 years ago this November, it struggled from day one to live up to its promise. Google created a first party gaming development studio just to create games for the service, but then closed it down 14 months later.

They continued to insist the service was doing ok in 2021, but it's now clear they missed their customer targets by hundreds of thousands.

They will continue to sell the services of Stadia's underlying streaming technology to third parties. As well as hinting on using the technology within Youtube, Google Play and AR.

In light of this news, when the service shuts down any Stadia specific hardware (controllers, TV boxes) will become redundant, and all commercial games and add-ons purchased in the store will be gone. Therefore Google have stated they will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchased made through the Google Store, as well as all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia store. Most refunds expected to be complete by mid-january 2023.
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